HMS Tamar has arrived in her home port of Portsmouth for the first time, becoming the fourth of five new offshore patrol vessels to be delivered from Glasgow shipyards and the most environmentally friendly since the age of sail.

The Royal Navy say here that HMS Tamar will now spend time on tests and trials allowing her crew to become acquainted with her before they begin operational sea training together.

Lieutenant Commander Mike Hutchinson, Commanding Officer of HMS Tamar, said:

“It’s a great achievement for both the Ship’s Company and our partners in BAE Naval Ships who built Tamar to arrive at Portsmouth Naval Base and begin her generation to a multi-role patrol vessel.”

“While many of our colleagues across the Armed Forces are already supporting the NHS during the immediate Covid-19 response, our current focus is on bringing Tamar to readiness so that the Royal Navy’s mission to protect our long-term national interests at home and overseas continues.”

The Royal Navy also say that HMS Tamar’s other sisters are already taking on vital maritime security work, with HMS Forth patrolling the Falkland Islands and HMS Medway in the Caribbean.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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65 COMMENTS

  2. I really like the lines of the vessel. Particularly from that angle. I would like to see one at full speed, even on youtube.

    • If she’s of the same build quality of HMS Forth, 24kn will see her start to fall apart!

      Joking apart, they’ll play an important role once we fully exit the EU.

        • I really hope they are used for something that adds a noticable amount to our economy and not fishing protection which is such a tiny percentage it is meaniless.

          Fishing protection is to buy votes from people that believe the hype around lost income and haven’t actually seen the real stats. Post this virus we are going to need all hands on deck to rebuild the economy and that isn’t it.

          • Sadly they are arn’t really suitable for anything more than fisheries patrols. The only reason we have one in the Flaklands is that Argentina no longer has a viable surface fleet. These vessels like the Type 31 are heavily underarmed, badly designed in that they don’t have a hangar and only exist because of the UK government pandering to BAE systems – what a way to do things!!

          • How is the Type-31 badly designed ? I thought they hadn’t finalised exactly how it would be armed. Also the Type 31 is slated to have an aviation hangar for a Merlin sized chopper . So not really seeing what the comparison with an opv is?

            Article U.K. defence journal Sept 12th 2019

          • I wonder how the price of the OPV compare to the annual tax income from fishing, i suspect pretty much on par.

          • These arguments about the current value of the fishing industry are disingenuous. We take back our waters… I’ll repeat that for effect … OUR waters … and we take back the thriving home and export business we used to have before it was signed away and the EU paid a bounty to scrap our fishing fleet. 7 pieces of silver.

          • The initial armament fior Type 31 comprises 1 x 57mm, 2 x 40mm and 12 x Sea Ceptor plus a helo – that’s all you get for the agreed build price. The UK government seems happy with that and no further consideration has been given to any upgrades at this time. Latest details can be found at Save the Royal Navy.
            There seems to be an unhealthy belief that Iran only operates small boats in the gulf, completely overlooking the fact that it operates larger well equipped vessels armed with anti-ship missiles fully capable of sinking a Type 31.

          • has that been confirmed yet? Last i heard is that is one of the potential build outs based on some mock ups shown

          • That is the load out in Babcocks very latest rendition (Save the Royal Navy). These ships are budget ships with the intention that they will be built to the budget agreed. It’s another case of fitted for but not with, and with the current expenditure on Covid 19, I can’t honestly see any overspending occurring on Defence…..

          • Ah cheers , but I note it says “ only an indicative outline which may be subject to changes”

            It does say fitted for the VLS and increased sea Ceptor so We will just have to wait and see what the final incarnation is .

            However knowing the donkeys ………………

          • There is a lot of fishing around the Falklands and its the biggest income source for the islands.

          • Fishing isn’t meaningless to those that go out in all weather to fish.
            Many coastal towns were decimated in the 60’s by losing the Icelandic fisheries and thereafter by the EU.
            I cant understand why winning votes isn’t important, its Democracy.

          • Just because the amount of GDP fishing currently Adds to the economy is small it could be larger in the future and it’s important to have diversity in our economy and it’s also really important to the people who live in the fishing towns around the country and there view is as important as the bankers who bring in billions

    • Yeah they would make nice corvettes with a few tweaks like hangar and small chopper, upgunned ect the RN should have corvettes

      • It would have to be done almost in secret, else MOD bean-counters would decide they were really frigates. (I’m all for it.)

      • What role would you see a corvette fill within the RN’s scope that’s more cost-effective than the solution(s) currently in-place?

        • Maybe Patrolling the Gulf and danger spots instead of more expensive frigates or destroyers. We could build a few corvettes for the price of one destroyer and the corvettes would do the same job as a deterrent except for far cheaper with a sixth Or less of the crew.

          • Patrolling the Gulf is what the Type 31 will be for. They’re essentially corvettes in a frigate’s body, which can be up-gunned if needed.

        • And if we had corvettes we could put them in danger spots and know they could protect themselves and we could patrol more areas globally where we are needed, 19 frigates and destroyers for our global commitments isn’t nearly enough, let’s build some well armed corvettes to patrol the lesser danger spots ect globaly freeing up much needed bigger assets for carrier escort and other missions.

          • I am a massive advocate of a good corvette. We are talking Meko, visby or c sword 90 here

            All of these would give a t23 a good fight and potentially win, so we really should be asking ourselves why we don’t have a larger fleet of 100m vessels with a crew of 40-80 that can achieve the majority if not everything that a t23 can and yet cost only 25% of a t26.

            Rivers are not useless but they are a waste of valuable money and we really should make this the last batch and move onto corvettes.

            25 corvettes, 9 t26 and 9 t31/45 is more than enough for our surface fleet, corvettes use unmanned platforms such as schiebel 100 and arcims mcm

            It also gives the navy a pipeline to train people up so for me is the perfect c1,2,3 set up that would allow us to save costs on the surface fleet and expand the submarine fleet with 7 SSK,s.

            We don’t need a corvette to have 7k legs. 5knm is good enough perhaps even less.

          • Corvettes are useless for hunting submarines, their limited range also limits them for patrols to the South Atlantic, Caribbean and East of Suiz. They would be useful in Bahrain and Oman but I would rather they paid the UK for the Vessels and Training and crewed them, themselves when they have plenty of money.

          • Not sure I agree with that statement. The biggest factors in ASW is stealth of the hunting platform, sonar, crew skill and ability to prosecute. A corvette can be designed to do this, however I am not suggesting they become ASW assets, but they can offer the same or better than the t23 gpf we currently have and can also replace our mcm fleet if we did go for something like visby which is a composite hull. Not suitable for everything but can do an awful lot of the low/ mid range activity I believe.

          • How come we have an OPV permenantly deployed in the caribean and the south Atlantic then? New opvs have better range than their predecessors and you could fit extra fuel tanks into corvettes

          • Pacman
            When all this virus thing is over i dont think anyone in the west will have the money left to build a rowing bout let alone 25 corvetts
            Its was all in the great plan of the Chinese to backrupt the west
            And it seems to be working

          • Perhaps the opposite Barry. Perhaps this government will see the error in running down manufacturing in the uk to the point we have and actually take a strategic decision to invest in key industries such as medical supplies and engineering.

            There is a need for 6k boxers and probably another 20k military vehicles as well as the shipbuilding plan which needs 4 ships per annum to maintain a fleet of 100 vessels

            Also instead of giving £10bn a year away in money as foreign aid, how about giving it in product, surely we can produce some nutrious food from the £3bn of root vegetables we grow and don’t even lift from the soil and surely we can provide vehicles and even container homes or such like.

            Perhaps we can do things differently, this has nothing to do with China. It is all of our own making and was always going to happen

          • The Chinese, specifically the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party need to be called out on Covid. They muzzled and punished doctors who spoke out in warning very early in the outbreak when they saw how viscous was the pneumonia produced by the virus. They owe the whole world an apology!

        • They are in fact a down-gunned corvette. Relatively easy to ‘reinstate’ if necessary, including a missile armament.

    • Know what you mean since they’ve not far short of twice the power of many OPVs including Batch 1. Same as Amazonas Class in fact. There is a still photo of her trials wake in Navy News, if that helps.

  3. FEBRUARY 4, 2020
    Enhancing the Royal Navy’s batch II OPVs

    “If the RN decides to go ahead with some form of enhancement, the Batch 2 OPV’s are large enough to be equipped with a considerably heavier weapons fit (eg. GermanBraunschweig class corvettes are 1,700 tonnes compared to a Batch 2 OPV at 2,000 tonnes). This is technically much more complex than this paper exercise may suggest but there is spare capacity available within the vessels. Below are some outline suggestions for enhancing the OPVs.”

    https://www.savetheroyalnavy.org/enhancing-the-royal-navys-batch-ii-opvs/

    • We could turn them into corvettes but I say let’s build a dozen corvettes to build up the RN again and then we might be able to achieve our global commitments.

      • So basically we’re back to the view that pretty much all of us on here would like to see more escorty type ships…. well who knew ???

        I’m not against pimping the OPV’s as such but there is a role for a simple vessel to to the OPV jobs. A second batch of 31’s would make a big difference but all this Covid stuff will have to be paid for so I fear any plans the current government had have all been kiboshed. Our kid’s kids will be paying this off.

    • Great article Nigel! Retrofitting is never ideal but certainly option1 would be good value for money and relatively simple. Option 3-basically creating a Corvette would almost certainly impact on the possibility of acquiring more frigates and should be avoided. As pointed out the Batch 2’s at 2000 tons are great seaworthy platforms-much larger than many corvettes in other navies, and would benefit greatly from a modest upgrade.

    • Yes, so that they reduce the possibility of detecting her diesel emissions, it’s also good for the environment.

  6. Interesting ships badge logo emblazoned on the hull “a la HMS Dragon”. A Crowned Lion Passant! Is this the start of a new trend in the RN along the lines of much US military equipment? I can understand the call to give local home nation identity to ships such as the Dragon but not so sure about the spread of Pop Art on Her Majesties Ships!
    Call me old fashioned…

  7. With her name being Tamar
    Should she not be based on the river Tamar
    Before anyone says why not base all of these river class boats on there respected river
    The Tamar also happens to a rather large naval base there where the others of the class dont
    Just saying

    • Because it makes absolutely no sense to base a single ship, at a single port simply because it shares a name with the river. Boots require a significant logistics trail to operate. Therefore, it’s best to keep your ships as close together as possible.

    • The Naval base is on the Hamoaze rather than the Tamar which starts just above the base. We already have a RM Tamar which replaced RM Turnchapel, built around 5 years ago.

      • A very good and informative article from STRN. It is natural that; faced with a serious shortage of escorts, it is tempting to try to turn the River 2 into some sort of fighty corvette for overseas operation in low and medium threat areas. I think however that this is going down the wrong road.

        There is a good case for a corvette/light frigate for overseas guardship and escort roles. It would however need to be able to dish out and take punishmenter if push came to shove. It would likely need a bigger hull than River 2, the old Floreals in the French navy and the Khareefs in Oman are 2,600-3;000 tons. The latter packs in a 76mm gun, 12 VL Microsoft, 8 x Block 111 Exocets, 2 × 30mm cannon, a flight deck, hangar and medium helo and it is still a corvette.

        No chance of getting a River 2 equipped to anything like that level, which would practically require some ASAP capability.

        Yes, build 6 capable corvette along these lines, fine for Caribbean, Gibraltar/Med, Indian Ocean territories and as a back-up to a (properly armed) T31 in the Gulf and Singapore, plus a couple at home in reserve/refit.

        Keep the Rivers for EEZ patrol duties in the UK and Falklands EEZ. There is a case for 8 OPVS in home waters, at the moment we are doing the patrol role with 3 and leaving the Scottish Fishery Protection guys to do the northern seas with 3 unarmed civilian boats.

        The question is what practical use would they be in wartime? Answer I think is that the next iteration of the OPV needs to have a basic ASW fit and a hangar for at least a UCAV and ideally a medium helo.

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